


Cloudy With a Chance of Citrus

by SesuRescue (Kigachan)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, Cloud Watching, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Sibling Incest, Thunder and Lightning, Thunderstorms, Undertale Monsters on the Surface
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kigachan/pseuds/SesuRescue
Summary: “hey grillbz, y'ever think about clouds?”Grillby hadn't before that conversation, but for some reason he found himself thinking about them a whole lot after, especially during their first thunderstorm on the Surface.





	Cloudy With a Chance of Citrus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [undertailsoulsex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undertailsoulsex/gifts).



> A certain cutie asked me to write a certain fic trope dealing with thunderstorms and hurt/comfort, so I figured I'd try my best to deliver for their birthday! I really hope you enjoy it, Soul! <3

“hey grillbz, y'ever think about clouds?”

Of all the things that Grillby expected to be the topic of their conversation for the evening, he couldn’t say he expected clouds to be the victor. Their bar talk tended to be lighter on average, more catered towards whatever their current situation was at the time. Since arriving on the surface their conversations had centered on humans: what they did during the day, how they acted in work and at the restaurant, and, Sans's favorite, disgusting facts about their physical make up. Grillby wasn't so sure if he ever needed to know _that_ much about the human biology.

In any case, it was safe to say that Grillby had been caught unaware by the shift. So unaware, in fact, that the glass he was cleaning slipped out of his grip and went careening towards the floor, stopping just short thanks to Sans's quick reflexes and magic. Grillby nodded a quick thanks and plucked the cup out of the cool aura of the gravity magic. He placed it on the counter and, after a moment of thought, placed his towel there as well. Leaning forward, he crossed one leg over the other and placed his elbows against the wood finish of his bar, settling in for a lengthy conversation.

“... Can't say I do, why do you ask?” He crackled. “... Is it because you figured out a way to extort G from inanimate objects now?”

“heh, i wish. nah, i was just thinking about clouds on the surface. they’re different than the ones back in the underground, did ya know that?”

Grillby shook his head. Somewhere in the back of his memory, he felt like he might’ve heard that before from someone, but thinking about it just made his head feel...fuzzy, for some reason. And in any case, it was cute when Sans talked science to him so he didn’t mind. “...what makes them different?”

“well,” Sans sat up straighter on his stool, adjusting his jacket before continuing. “under the mountain, we had about, what, maybe six or seven thousand feet of clearance before we hit the ceiling? yeah, that sounds about right. because of that, the types of clouds that could form were limited, usually the foggy ones or the animal shaped ones. but out here on the surface, there’s no ceiling. no limit to what can form. there’s just so much--” Sans lazily waved a hand high over his head-- “ _more_ space.”

“...That makes sense.” And it did, conceptually. Grillby wasn’t sure where the sky ended, or if it did end at all, but it wasn’t a stretch to believe it surpassed what existed as their own ‘sky’ under the mountain. He moved down to rest his head in his palms as he mentally connected the dots from their conversation. “...so you saw a new cloud today?”

“kind of. paps saw it first. nearly broke down the door to get me outside so he could show me--don’t give me that look, the door is fine, promise. you can check for yourself when we get home if you’re worried, skeleton’s honor.”

Grillby gave the approximation of a wry smile. “...Pretty sure that isn’t a thing.”

“wha--sure it is. we skeletons are an honest folk, didn’t you know? very charming too.”

“...Papyrus, maybe. The jury is still out on you.”

“heh, you wound me grillbz.” Despite his words, Sans’s broad grin said otherwise. “in any case, i gotta tell ya, it was something to behold. wasn’t like the clouds were anything spectacular, just some wispy white lines, but somehow i knew from seeing them that everything was gonna be alright up here, you know?”

Grillby glanced behind Sans at the clock on the wall, noting the late hour. He righted himself and reached to untie his half apron. “...Don’t think we can say that so early. we just got here, after all. Who knows what the surface has planned for us?”

“ah, see, you wouldn’t think like that if you had seen what i saw. i’m telling ya, surface clouds are good.”

“...I’ll take your word for it, now help me clean up.”

* * *

Their late night conversation stayed with Grillby for longer than he thought it would. It started with a glance upwards every now and again at a stoplight. nothing definitive, just a quick look. To him, all of the clouds looked the same: just formless masses of water that might or might not rain down at any moment. It was...kind of terrifying, actually. What did Sans see in these?

He continued to check out the sky for the rest of the week with unsuccessful results until he finally gave up and sought out advice. Not wanting to deal with Sans’s ‘I told you so’ tone (which, while miles better than Papyrus’s, still managed to make his flames irritated for a few hours), Grillby looked for Papyrus. He found him in the kitchen at the stove, sporting an ambitious bone-themed apron and pajama set.  Said skeleton looked up as he approached, offering him a bright smile as he put a lid on whatever he had been cooking. It smelled spicy. “Hello, Grillby! Are you hungry? I made rice pilaf.”

Grillby hugged Papyrus from behind, looping his arms underneath Papyrus’s ribcage to settle at his spine. He burrowed his face into Papyrus’s neck, planting small kisses on as many of the vertebrae as he could reach before being shooed off.   “...I think I’ll have some later. Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure! The Great Papyrus would be honored to help you with whatever you need!”

“...I...well,” Grillby coughed and tried again. “...I’m having trouble...with cloud watching. Sans told me that you were good at picking out clouds--”

“The best!” Papyrus interrupted. He swiveled his body so that he was facing Grillby, meeting the blue-tinted visage of his boyfriend with bright eye-lights. “I’d be delighted to look at clouds with you! We can use the telescope!”

Grillby tilted his head. “...Telescope?” Did they bring something like that when they moved?

“Sans brought it up on a second trip!” Papyrus said as if reading Grillby’s thoughts directly. “It was in the Wishing Room, so it wasn’t with our other belongings from the house.”

“...Right, I understand. Where to then?”

“The spare room upstairs! That’s where I’ve been setting it up,” Papyrus planted a quick kiss around where Grillby’s mouth was before slipping out of his hold. He turned the stovetop to the lowest heat setting, and then the two of them headed for the staircase. Papyrus paused at the landing, casting a hesitant glance back towards the couch and the skeleton snoozing on it. “Should we wake up Sans?”

Grillby shook his head. “...Let him sleep. We can tell him about it when wakes up.”

Once they reached the bedroom, Grillby hung in the doorway, watching with interest as Papyrus pulled out a large cylindrical object out of the closet. This must be the telescope, he guessed. Papyrus placed the telescope close to the window, angling the large end so that it stuck up towards the sky. When that was done, Papyrus crouched down until his right socket was over what Grillby assumed was the viewport. He muttered to himself as he turned a dial on the side, and when he was satisfied he moved to a different dial to make further adjustments.

“Wowie, we’re in luck! There are a lot of fantastic shapes out today! Here, take a look.”

Papyrus pulled back from the telescope, and Grillby had to fight the urge to laugh. He settled for keeping his gaze on the telescope instead of the bright red circle currently decorating Papyrus’s socket. Definitely Sans’s work.

Approaching the device, Grillby took off his glasses and handed them to Papyrus before kneeling down. He steadied the telescope, making sure to keep it at the same position Papyrus left it in, and looked through the port.

“...Oh, I recognize this one. It shows up in Waterfall, right?”

“Correct! That is the--” Something rustled behind Grillby, sounding suspiciously like crinkled paper--”Cumulus cloud, or as you might know them, the animal-shape cloud!”

Grillby breathed out a sigh as he took in the view. It wasn’t really anything to scoff at, just a small lump in the sky, but somehow looking at it through the telescope made it feel more...important?  “...Okay, show me one I haven’t seen before.”

“I believe if you angle your telescope up and to the left a little, you should be able to see a few Cirrus-type clouds.”

“...Citrus?”

“Not Citrus, _Cirrus._ Wowie Grillby, I think you need to clean the soot out of your ears!” Papyrus exclaimed with a laugh.

Grillby decided not to mention his lack of ears and instead did as Papyrus instructed. He moved the telescope slowly from the...whatever that one cloud was and scanned the sky for the citrus-y clouds. At first, all he saw were the deep blue tones of the sky--which, while beautiful, wasn’t quite what he was looking for--, but after a few more swivels Grillby finally found what he believed was right. Unlike the puffy clouds he was familiar with, these were much thinner and in smaller pieces, peppering the area with their presence. They almost reminded him of the long grains of rice Papyrus often bought for his dinner dishes, if the rice had been taken out of the bag and scattered across the table. Definitely not lemons or any other citrus fruit.

“...Those certainly are different.”

The floor creaked behind Grillby as Papyrus stepped past him towards the window. “They are! And they move so fast!”

Grillby made a sound of agreement. They were moving rather fast for clouds, almost as if there was an oven somewhere to turn off.

He continued to watch the clouds roll through the sky through the telescope, finding himself starting to relax. He couldn’t quite place it but there was something in the way the clouds simply...drifted. They had no worries in life, no rush to get anywhere. It was enviable, really.

Before Grillby could fall too far into the sweet serenity of comfort, Papyrus gasped loudly, wrenching him back to the present. His flames took on a questioning tilt as he pulled away from the telescope. “...What’s wrong?”

Papyrus shuffled over to Grillby’s side, crouching down beside him. “It’s just, well I don’t want to trouble you but there’s a very big cloud out there.” He began to move the telescope as he continued, peeking through the hole every now and again to make further adjustments. “It’s nothing to worry about, definitely not a concern to us, but I want to look at it.”

“...Just to check on it, right?”

“Exactly!”

Grillby sat back on his heels with a frown. Papyrus was acting odd--well, odder than usual. He was exhibiting all of his signs of barely-contained unease, and not just in his words either. From Grillby’s vantage point, he could see where Papyrus’s upper and lower arm joined together, as well as the occasional anxious spark of orange magic between them. What had him so worried?

Eventually, his waiting paid off, and Papyrus finally spoke again. “As I thought, it’s definitely nothing to yell about, just a rain cloud! Well, one particular type of rain cloud. When I looked all of this up on the human’s undernet, I saw that this cloud was called a…” Papyrus pulled out a piece of paper--probably the same paper from before. A cheat sheet perhaps?-- and squinted at it briefly.

“Well, I apparently felt that I didn’t need to write it down since I have an impeccable memory, but I am having a temporary lapse in remembering it. I think it’s a _something_ -nimbus maybe? In any case! These particular clouds can be very dangerous! Sometimes they can bring tornadoes!”

Grillby shivered. “...That sounds dangerous.”

“Right? Just the word gives me the heebie-jeebies so I never looked up what it was. In any case, this lovely cloud we have here looks to be nothing more than a friendly, unassuming, friend--HOLY MOLY, WHAT IS THAT?!”

Papyrus let out a horrendous shriek and ducked under the telescope as a white flash flickered from the window. Grillby quickly rose to his feet and placed himself between Papyrus and the window, letting his flames fan out from his body to protect his boyfriend from... _whatever_ that was. “...Papyrus, are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?”  

“WE’RE GONNA DIE!” Papyrus wailed, curling further into himself.

Grillby’s SOUL skipped at the agony in Papyrus’s voice, and there was nothing he wanted to do more than soothe him. He placed a comforting warm hand on the back of Papyrus’s neck and projected the warm and safe feeling of a fireplace.

Suddenly, a large _BOOM_ shook Grillby out of his calm state like a blistering wind, leaving him shell-shocked. The magic in his body felt a few degrees cooler as his flames stiffened in their actions. His SOUL turned violently as his palms started to itch, and he stumbled to the ground when breathing started to become harder and harder to remember how to do.

His vision blacked for a second, or what he thought was a second, but when his eyes fluttered open Papyrus and Sans were huddled over him. Their hands were green with healing magic, and Grillby wondered why they were doing that. Did he not just decide to take a quick nap? He groaned out something incoherent--he _meant_ to ask them what they were doing, and he wanted to make sure that Papyrus was okay, but for some reason, the magic responsible for his vocals wasn’t quite working correctly?--which made both skeletons gasp.

“GRILLBY!”

“grillbz, you’re okay!”

Grillby lifted his head to look at Sans, fighting off the wave of vertigo the action produced. Sans...didn’t look too well, now that Grillby could see him. The flames of his body illuminated Sans’s bones, revealing the pale, ashen look to him. The lights in Sans’s sockets had been gutted out at some point, and that paired with his permanent grin gave him a rather terrifying countenance. ”...What happened?”

“i--well, you tell me. i woke up to a bright flash and paps freaking out over your unconscious body.”

“...Unconscious...I passed out?” Grillby asked, incredulous.

“Yeah!” Papyrus’s voice came from behind him, and Grillby realized that he was, in fact, being propped up by Papyrus. “You were soothing me, and then you just went down like a--”

Papyrus stopped as a large flash lit up the window, and both skeletons shuddered audibly, bones clacking against each other. Almost simultaneously after a large _CRACK_ sound rumbled, and Grillby could’ve sworn it had enough force to shake the house. Or maybe that was just his body quaking. He sucked in a quick breath and laid his head back in Papyrus’s lap. “[ _What is that dreadful sound?]”_ Grillby rasped out in his mother tongue inadvertently, repeating the question in hand signs for the other two.

“thunder, i think? according to the ‘net, the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from the lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding the bolt, and then it creates a sonic shock wave,” Sans rambled. Even in his compromised state, Grillby could see Sans’s hands shaking at their sides. “the flash is the lightning, and that’s the discharge that occurs between the electrically charged regions of a cloud and the ground, and--”

“AND LIGHTNING IS VERY, Very, very frightening,” Papyrus interrupted deliriously, growing quieter as he went until he was nearly whispering. “I’ve read horror stories about those things attacking whatever they want with no rhyme or reason. They can strike humans dead with one hit! They can take down trees easily, reducing them to nothing more than a charred mess!”

“i think we’re probably safe inside,” Sans reasoned.

Papyrus shook his head vehemently, tears pricking at the corners of his sockets. “It’s already taken out our power, who knows who’s next!”

“it might’ve just hit the power lines outside--”

“I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE, SANS!” Papyrus wailed, reaching out and pulling Sans into his chest. By some miracle Sans managed to stay mostly on the ground, leaving his shirt to billow over Grillby’s head, giving him a view of Sans’s ribcage. At this proximity, Grillby could feel all of the feelings currently fueling the anxiety wafting from Sans’s SOUL, from the fear of the unknown outside to the helplessness of not being able to soothe Papyrus.

Another combo of lightning and thunder came, and the three clung to each other. Small pitter-patters of the incoming storm fell over the house, smothering the top of the window in tiny water droplets.

Grillby heard a tiny sizzle from outside of his vision, and it wasn’t until he felt a spike of pain that he realized it came from him. He groaned out in pain, tapping his hand insistently against Sans’s spine. “...W-Water!” He gasped out.

The two spurred into action. Sans nearly sprinted to the window and pulled it shut, and Papyrus ran his hands over Grillby’s exposed legs with healing magic. He signed a quick thanks, and they all heaved a collective sigh.

This felt like a hopeless situation if Grillby ever knew one. Between the lightning and the thunder, they were getting pelted on all sides. Was there anything they could do to ease their discomfort over this?

He knew that it wouldn’t be easy to deal with the audio effects of the storm, so Grillby focused on the flashes. Was there anything he could do to block them from the lightning? It seemed to be bright enough to even bleed through the curtains, according to Sans’s recollection of seeing the flash downstairs. They needed something else to help shield them.

Grillby took a cursory glance around the room, stopping at the neatly-made bed.

Oh, those could work.

“...Have you two ever made a blanket fort before?”

 

As it turned out, Papyrus was rather adept at making blanket forts, boldly proclaiming that he had a ‘PfD’ in the subject--which, of course, stood for ‘Doctor of Pillow Fort-ing’. While the two of them stripped the sheets and comforter off the bed, Sans decided to do what he did best (nothing at all). It was slow work, and every few seconds the storm would showcase its fury through a violent flash of lightning and a scream of thunder, making them temporarily lose their focus.

After a good ten or twenty minutes of constructing, thoroughly ransacking their closets for extra blankets, and grabbing all of the cushions off the couch, their fort was finally complete. Papyrus and Sans quickly crawled into the fort, settling down into the pillows they laid on the ground.

“oh man, this is so nice,” Sans sighed happily, falling into Papyrus’s lap. “good idea, g.”

“I agree! It was a very good idea! Come in and snuggle with us!”

Grillby went to step in, but an abrupt thought stopped him. “...Give me one minute.”

With their curious eye-lights on his back, Grillby walked over to the shelf of books above their fireplace. He scanned the various titles for something interesting, and with a small chuckle he plucked the book at the end and walked back over to the fort.

He crawled in and flipped the sheets down behind him, enclosing them fully in their makeshift cover. His flames chased off the darkness, and the result was an ambient glow. “...Now to see if this works.”

They held their metaphorical breaths and waited. After a few tense moments, thunder crackled outside, but the lightning hadn’t been able to pierce through the layers of sheets.

“Success!” Papyrus cheered. “Now we just have to worry about the thunder for Grillby!”

“...I’ve got that covered,” Grillby said, revealing the book in his hands. “...If I read this out loud, I’ll be able to focus on it instead of the thunder.”

“did it have to be ‘ _velvet and cinders’_ tho? why not one of your other less trashy romcoms?”

Grillby chuckled. “...You’re the one that decided to date me. That means you have to take all of me, even my trashy romance novels. Now come over here and cuddle.”

Sans grumbled but moved over regardless to Grillby’s left side, resting his back against the foot of the couch and his head on Grillby’s arm. Papyrus took up the right flank, looping his arm around Grillby’s and lacing their fingers together.

“...Um--”

“I’ll use magic to turn the page, is that alright?” Papyrus asked.

Grillby nodded; he could never say no to Papyrus, after all. He flipped the book open with his free hand, turning until he reached the beginning of the story. “Okay, ‘ _Velvet and Cinders’_. Chapter 1: One Weird Trick Makes Two in the Hand, But One in the Bush…”

The storm continued to churn and roar, and would eventually yield to a light dusting of rain in the early morning. The turbulent clouds, after hovering in the area for upwards of a few hours, would finally dissipate, allowing a low layer of grey ones to take their place in the sky. Grillby would end up looking out to those low, grey clouds in the morning and wonder how they fell into whatever grand scheme the Surface had planned for them, but for now…

Well, for now, he had a book and his two favorite monsters to keep him company.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always for reading, I really appreciate it! Check out my NSFW tumblr: [Sesurescue](http://Sesurescue.tumblr.com)


End file.
